CHASING WATERFALLS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-12-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Last Saturday the weather was so nice we decided to take a little motorcycle ride. It's nice to feel the wind lapping at your face, and it's one of the few things I don't mind lapping at my face. Our destination was a day trip to Kent Falls up Route 7 in Connecticut, with a visit to the Eric Sloane Museum along the way. At the end of Dog Tail Corners Road we stopped at the Bulls Covered Bridge for a photo, but you can't see the bridge at all because they built a cover over it. The good news is that if you drive over it in the rain, your car stays dry the whole time. 

     At the Eric Sloane Museum, an enthusiastic docent told us about his life and accomplishments. He was a prolific painter, author and lover of Americana. His collection of antique hand tools is on display there, because he viewed them as a utilitarian art form. If you've often wondered what a picaroon was, or a winnowing machine or a bark spud, this is the place to find out. There was something called a "flail with eelsking thong," which if I'm not mistaken was also the title of a Kim Kardashian Instagram post.

     Eric Sloane had a lifelong fascination with weather, clouds and the atmosphere, and he was commissioned to paint the 7 storey-high mural that is on display in the lobby of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. 

     You can tour his studio, recreated with the tools he used and the books he found inspiration in all sitting there as if he just got up for a beer. I pictured myself painting in the studio, trying to figure out how so much paint got in my hair, and how I might get it out, and I end up trying to actually use my hair to paint something, and my wife walks in and sees it, makes a noise that I am well used to and walks quickly out again without further comment. I realized it was time to go before I pictured anything else.

     Kent Falls is a nice place to have a picnic or get a good selfie or take your kids. If you want to bring them back home again that's up to you. We watched one girl set up an entire portable selfie studio with a light ring and a tripod, and she clearly had invested some time in hair and make-up. Perhaps she was an influencer, and I hear that crayfish are easily influenced, so I just hope that she was using her powers for good instead of evil.

     You're not allowed to scale the falls themselves, but there's a precarious path you can walk up near the side of the water if you want to get a nice view from the top. I'm guessing it's the place where Kent actually fell from when they named the place after him, because going back down wasn't that much easier than climbing up.

     My grandmother used to take me to Kent Falls when I was a little kid. I remember catching crayfish in the brook, a fact that my wife did not believe. "No way you did that," she said, but it's not like they run all that fast. Neither my Grandmother nor the crayfish are around to corroborate the story, though. "What did you do with them?" She asked. I said, "I roasted them on the spit and made crayfish thermidor out of them. It's like lobster thermidor only smaller." She didn't believe me anyway so why not.

     Our final stop was a chocolate shop in the town of Kent, where they peremptorily apologized for the chocolate shortage, another unfortunate by-product of the pandemic. Most of the good stuff was already taken: fudge was sold out, no chocolate chip cookies or tree bark. All that was left were chocolates made by people who tried to ruin them by putting stuff in them that was clearly not chocolate, like coconuts or fruit syrups or even liquor, which is where the term "chocoholic" probably comes from. Folks, the way you can improve my chocolate experience is by leaving a little more of it for me.